By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 1, 2015 Since December 2013 there have been a rash of unusual deaths among workers at JPMorgan Chase, including alleged leaps from buildings and two separate alleged murder-suicides in New Jersey. A noteworthy number of the deaths have been among technology workers. With the exception of Julian Knott, who was a high level technology expert for JPMorgan in both London and later at the firm’s high tech Global Network Operations Center in Whippany, New Jersey, all of the individuals were under 40. (See names and incidents below.) Last Thursday, 29-year old Thomas Hughes allegedly took his life by jumping from a luxury apartment building at 1 West Street in Manhattan. According to Hughes’ resume at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), he had previously interned at JPMorgan Chase, as well as held jobs at Citigroup and UBS after graduation from Northwestern University. Hughes … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 28, 2015 Stanley Fischer, the Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve, was seated in the audience when author and consultant, Margaret Heffernan, dropped her bombshell at the “Finance & Society” conference on May 6 of this year. The conference panel was themed “Other People’s Money: Governance, Integrity, & Ethics” and Heffernan fired the equivalent of a heat-seeking missile through one of Wall Street’s biggest lies: that there is a legitimate basis for the obscene pay of its CEOs and traders. Heffernan told the audience: “There’s another assumption in this which is performance-related pay is going to make people do a better job. This is not substantiated by the research. It just isn’t…I can find proof that it will make people run a little bit harder for about 15 minutes, but I can’t find the proof that over the long term, over time, it really … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 27, 2015 Senator Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts is a household name in America. Kara Stein is not. But both of these women are having a seismic impact on entrenched Wall Street group-think in Washington. Stein is one of the five Commissioners of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), appointed by President Obama and sworn in just 22 months ago. Stein brought a unique set of qualifications to the SEC: from 2009 to 2013, Stein served as Staff Director of the Securities, Insurance, and Investment Subcommittee of the Senate Banking Committee. She is credited with playing a key role in drafting significant portions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. What Warren and Stein have in common are values of right and wrong that resonate deeply with the American people and the willingness to speak common sense truths that challenge the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 26, 2015 As the U.S. Department of Labor deliberates giving JPMorgan Chase a waiver to continue business as usual after it pleaded guilty to a felony charge for engaging in a multi-bank conspiracy to rig foreign currency trading, a letter the bank sent to its foreign currency customers should become Exhibit A in the deliberations. The letter effectively tells JPMorgan’s customers, here’s how we’re going to continue to rip your face off. Two sections of the letter stand out in particular. One section reads: “As a market maker that manages a portfolio of positions for multiple counterparties’ competing interests, as well as JPMorgan’s own interests, JPMorgan acts as principal and may trade prior to or alongside a counterparty’s transaction to execute transactions for JPMorgan…” (Italic emphasis added.) Most of the general public believes that proprietary trading (trading for the house) was outlawed by … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 25, 2015 Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary in Bill Clinton’s administration and currently Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, is an important voice for tackling income inequality in America by bringing back the Glass-Steagall Act, busting up the too-big-to-fail banks, and imposing a securities transaction tax. In 2013, Reich released a documentary, “Inequality for All,” that demonstrated that there is a finite equilibrium of income distribution at which the U.S. economy can grow and prosper. In 1928 and 2007, the year before each of the greatest financial crashes in our nation’s history, income inequality peaked. When workers are stripped of an adequate share of the nation’s income, they are not able to function as consumers, creating a vicious cycle of layoffs and slow economic growth – the situation the U.S. has been mired in since the Wall Street crash … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 22, 2015 When the U.S. Department of Justice held its press conference on Wednesday to announce that five mega banks were each pleading guilty to a felony charge, paying big fines and being put on probation for three years, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Leslie Caldwell specifically took a battering ram to the reputation of Swiss bank, UBS. Four banks — Citicorp, a unit of Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays — pleaded guilty to an antitrust charge of conspiring to rig foreign currency trading while UBS pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud for its earlier involvement in rigging the interest rate benchmark, Libor. In explaining why the Justice Department was ripping up the non-prosecution agreement it had negotiated with UBS in December 2012 over its involvement in the Libor fraud and now charging it with a … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 21, 2015 After more than 200 years of operation, yesterday JPMorgan Chase became an admitted felon. That action for foreign currency rigging came less than two years after the bank was charged with two felony counts and given a deferred prosecution agreement for aiding and abetting Bernie Madoff in the largest Ponzi fraud in history. The felony counts came amid three years of non-stop charges against JPMorgan Chase for unthinkable frauds: from rigging electric markets to ripping off veterans to charging credit card customers for fictitious credit monitoring and manipulating the Libor interest rate benchmark. Against this backdrop of a serial crime spree on the part of employees on multiple continents and coast to coast in the United States, JPMorgan released a statement yesterday regarding the bank pleading guilty to a felony charge for engaging in the rigging of foreign currency trading, calling … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 20, 2015 The U.S. Department of Justice held a press conference in Washington, D.C. this morning at 10 a.m. to announce that two of the largest banks in the United States, Citicorp, a unit of Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase & Co., would plead guilty to felony charges in connection with the rigging of foreign currency trading. Two foreign banks, Barclays PLC and the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), also pleaded guilty to felony charges in the same matter. A fifth bank, UBS, pled guilty to rigging the interest rate benchmark known as Libor. Today’s felony charges fall just short of the 19th anniversary of the U.S. Justice Department charging almost every major firm on Wall Street, including JPMorgan, the predecessors of Citigroup, and UBS with fixing prices on the Nasdaq stock market. No criminal charges were brought. That now looks like a serious … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 19, 2015 In the late 1990s, Salomon Smith Barney’s telecom analyst, Jack Grubman, was viewed by his powerful firm as a “disruptor.” He was throwing out the old rules on how a telecom analyst should interact with a company on which he was delivering research to the public and creating a new, innovative model. Instead of following the old rules and remaining pristinely independent and objective, Grubman was sitting in on board meetings at WorldCom, giving investment advice to its executives, while simultaneously issuing laudatory research to induce the investing public to buy the stock. When BusinessWeek questioned Grubman on this new analyst model on May 14, 2000, here’s how the disruptor explained his redesign of his job:  “What used to be a conflict is now a synergy…Someone like me who is banking-intensive would have been looked at disdainfully by the buy side 15 years ago. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 15, 2015 On April 28, Martin Lipton, Chairman of NYU, and its President, John Sexton, announced that hedge fund billionaire John Paulson would receive the “Albert Gallatin Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Society” at NYU’s 183rd Commencement ceremony, slated for next Wednesday. Albert Gallatin was one of the founders of NYU and a former Treasury Secretary under Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Gallatin is buried in Trinity churchyard at the corner of Wall Street and Broadway – and he’s likely rolling over in his grave at the idea of having his name appended to John Paulson. John Paulson is the founder and head of Paulson & Co., infamously known on Wall Street as the firm that conspired with Goldman Sachs to create Abacus 2007-AC1 – an investment Paulson & Co. assisted in designing to collapse in value. On April 16, 2010, the SEC brought charges against … Continue reading →